Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (5 page)

Stephanie Beach wasn’t
happy. She’d spent an hour in the crèche playing with a despondent
five-year-old girl named Jennifer. As Stephanie saw it, Jennifer’s
problem was that she didn’t seem to understand how to play with any
of the toys, as if she didn’t have any idea how to react to them.
Stephanie had resigned herself to acting out improvised movie
scenes with broken action figures on her own for half an hour and
her reward for this? She was now strapped in to the booster seat of
the Toyota and her father appeared to be harboring the expectation
that she would just keep quiet about it.

“I’m on the
phone honey, just a minute okay? John, yeah, John it’s David can
you hear me?”

The voice on
the other end of the line was deep and commanding, “David, I’m not
supposed to be talking to you, do you understand?”

David tried
again to motion for Stephanie to be quiet, glancing over his
shoulder sternly as she tried to kick the back of his seat.

“John, I don’t
understand what’s going on. They seem to think I’m involved in all
of this somehow.”

There was
silence on the other end of the line. David didn’t know if
Undersecretary Carlton was being maliciously evasive or just
cautious.

“John, do you
know what the hell they’re talking about?”

The quick
inhale of breath from the back seat reminded David that he wasn’t
supposed to use the “H” word in front of Stephanie and he mouthed a
silent apology to her through the rear view mirror. The voice of
John Carlton blared over the car’s speakers, “David, I’m getting a
lot of flak about this already. You better be damned sure about who
you talk to from now on, okay?”

“John, they’re
saying you didn’t even call me while I was on vacation.”

“David, I’m not
getting into this with you. What you discuss with the FBI is your
business, and it’s sure as shit going to stay that way.”

Stephanie drew
in breath again, feigning shock at the mild curse. She would be
sure to guilt her father about his failure to protect her delicate
ears from the harsh world, he certainly deserved such chastisement
… crèche indeed. Chastisement. She ran the word through her teeth,
tongue, pursed lips, and back to her tongue, the silent incantation
curling the corners of her mouth. She had been struggling through
Les Misérables
since seeing the movie (she would tell anyone
who cared to listen that she was reading it, although mostly, she
jumped about the tome, battling with sentences here and there.)
Chastisement was a heavy word, with heavy meaning, and she loved
it, at least this week. She patted her back pack contentedly,
feeling the edge of the thick volume there, her mind wondering off
to the slightly violent fantasy of clobbering that listless waif
back at the creche with the full force of French literature.

Back in the
car, safe from Stephanie’s flights of fancy, but facing up to the
harsher realities, David’s fingers gripped the steering wheel
tightly, “John, I’m heading into the office, I need to talk to you
about this.”

Undersecretary
Carlton coughed to clear his throat, “David, you can’t come into
the office. You need to lawyer up, and make sure whoever you get is
damned good. Make no mistake John, your name is shit around these
hallowed halls right now. You have royally screwed the pooch on
this. Say Hi to Stephanie for me” Stephanie managed to shriek “Hi
Mr Carlton.” From the back seat before the line clicked dead.

West was surprised
when Charlene finally sat up and took her hands away from her face.
The skin around her eyes was a little red and puffy, but at least
she hadn’t been wearing makeup so there were no spider scrawl runs
of mascara. He opened his mouth to speak, but Charlene cut him off,
holding up a finger to silence him. He nodded slowly and sat back,
leaning against a coffee table which occupied the space on the
floor behind him.

Charlene wasn’t
sure how long it had taken to muster the courage to sit up, and now
that she found herself facing him, she wasn’t sure what she wanted
to say to West. Charlene had often pondered on the possibility of
this event. No, not this, not facing some unworldly doppelgänger of
a man she once knew. She had thought about what she would say to
the man she knew as Anthony Statham if she ever saw him again.

She had been
best friends with Anthony Statham for a year, as close as she had
ever been to a man, although their relationship had never broken
into the realms of true physical intimacy. Anthony had been patient
in his love, understanding of her timidity and naivety and Charlene
could think of no better way of spending her life than in his
company. Then, a month before her mother passed away, Anthony was
gone from her life without a single word of explanation. He had no
family that she knew of, no friends she could talk to about what
had happened. She had been inconsolable at the time, but the sense
of anger and loss was soon swallowed by the emotional turmoil of
her mother’s passing.

When she’d
thought of Anthony Statham over the years, she had imagined the
anger she would unleash, the hurt and indignation she would vent at
him for leaving her, for not understanding that she would be good
enough, better than good enough … too good for him. She had always
felt so cheated, robbed of her opportunity to hate him to his face,
and instead she had been forced to spend her years wondering what
she had done, how she had managed to turn away someone she loved so
much.

“Who are you
really?” when the words finally came, they were effortless and they
did manage to evince a tempered disdain.

“I have gone by
many names throughout my life, although the name I was born to was
West Yestler and that is the name I hold dearest.”

Charlene closed
her eyes and shook her head slowly, already frustrated by the
conversation. She felt she had lived long enough to deserve frank
discourse, not half-truths or lies of omission. She opened her eyes
and glared at West, trying to push past her own frailty to portray
a mask of no nonsense intimidation, “Your name tells me nothing Mr
Yestler, except that you’re a canny liar. You know what I mean; who
are you really?”

West touched
his fingertips to his chin, wishing momentarily that he could
remember the feeling of his skin. He had wanted this confrontation
for a long time, to be able to reveal himself to Charlene Osterman
completely. He looked around her apartment and drew comfort from
her collections of trivialities and treasures.

“Charlene, you
were a child when you met Anthony Statham and he was a man who
loved you, but he was also a man who existed merely as a means to
an end. Anthony Statham was a persona I adopted to establish
contact with several people in this great city and that should have
been the end of him. It was your fault, at least partially your
fault that Anthony Statham became more than a figment of my lonely
imagination.”

Charlene’s body
rocked gently, a slow and throaty laugh building into a coarse
cackle, “Impossible. I knew Anthony Statham nearly seventy years
ago; how in the name of all that is holy do you expect me to
believe …” she laughed harder and the laughter subsided into a fit
of coughing, which she struggled to control. She could barely
continue, “How the heck …” she coughed again, “How am I supposed to
believe that you are that same man? You’re barely a man
yourself.”

She was
starting to feel comfortable with her thoughts, confident that this
was not the onset of the end of her mind. She allowed her thoughts
to stretch their legs and race again, trying to fathom how this man
had worked such a devious trick, or better yet, why? What could
anyone possibly stand to gain from all of this? She had nothing of
worth, no great sum of hoarded wealth to pass on to anyone, and
that thought puzzled her more than anything.

West smiled
gently and nodded, “Let me ask you a question Charlene. You were
coughing just now. When was the last time you coughed without your
chest being wracked with pain?”

Charlene eased
herself back on the couch, brushing the cushions with her fingers.
She glanced at her lap as she thought about the odd question. She’d
suffered from angina for the past year, that much was true. She
tried to remember if it always hurt when she coughed. She glanced
over to a small table in the corner of the room, a table on which
sat a small jewelry chest in which she kept her nitroglycerin and
beta blockers. She hadn’t taken her medication today, but usually
it didn’t hurt so much to cough when she had taken nitroglycerin.
She answered honestly, “It doesn’t always hurt.”

West nodded,
“You were coughing pretty bad just now, did it hurt at all?”

“No.”

West allowed
her time to think about this before he continued.

“I need you to
relax Charlene, take some deep breaths and find calm within
yourself.”

She squinted
and leaned towards him, “I’m not into any of that meditation crap
Mr Yestler. Say what you’ve got to say and be done with it; I’m too
old for this verbal dance.”

West stood up
and came to sit next to her on the couch, slow and careful, as if
he was approaching a beast of the wild. Charlene moved slightly to
accommodate him and she arched her head away from him disdainfully,
which gave him cause to chuckle gently. “Charlene, I’m not going to
hurt you, don’t worry.” He took her hands in his and held them on
her lap.

“Charlene, if
you were to drink a glass of water right now with some salt in it,
you would be sick, a little sicker than you would usually expect.
There is nothing wrong with you, you are not ill, however, when you
woke just now, you woke because some small change was working
itself in you.”

Charlene tried
to back away further on the couch, pressing up against an
embroidered cushion behind her, “What kind of a change? What are
you talking about?” Her fear was obvious and West kept hold of her
hands gently, rubbing the tendons of her fingers in what he hoped
were comforting circles.

“The first
change would be in your heart. You have had an obstruction that
causes angina?”

She nodded
nervously in response and West continued, “The first change in you
would be in the coronary arteries, where the blockage would be
loosened. Within the last few minutes, the muscles of your heart
will have changed, almost imperceptibly to you, but you will notice
already that your pain has subsided.” She pulled her hands away
from him and tucked them firmly together on her lap. She didn’t
like what he was saying, and she wished there was a way she could
back out of this altogether, get him to leave her apartment and
forget any of this had happened.

West sighed,
shoulders heaving a little, prickled by her continued mistrust of
him. “Charlene, you need to understand right now that any change
that has happened to you will do you no harm. If you were to drink
a glass of salty water, you would be sick and your life would
continue as before, except you would probably not suffer any more
from chest pains.”

“Doctor Sawyers
says I’ll always have chest pains! What have you done? What have
you given me?” She asked.

“Damned leeches!”
Hannah Beach threw a half folded letter on the kitchen table as she
heard the front door close. She glanced at her niece, grimacing and
covering her mouth apologetically, “I’m sorry Spiff … Please don’t
ever talk like your Aunt Han okay?”

Stephanie
frowned. She had been so excited to embarrass her father, regaling
her Aunt with stories of how depraved, and callous he was, and now
she was more frustrated that her Aunt’s slip up had completely
taken the wind out of her sails. She threw her little back pack on
the floor in contempt, the weight of Jean Valjean’s misery thudding
in satisfying syncopation with her own huff. She was sure if she
pictured poor Courgette’s plight, she’d be able to milk this
situation and squeeze out a tear (Cosette … she knew, but she
enjoyed her father’s exasperation every time he had to correct
her.) When no tear came, she tried humming a line of
Castle on a
Cloud
, before conceding defeat, growling at her Aunt, and
charging towards her, hugging her tightly around her waist.

David smiled at
Hannah, shrugging to signal his confusion at Stephanie’s behavior,
“So, who’s bleeding you dry now?”

Hannah ran her
fingers through Stephanie’s hair, then shook her gently by the
shoulders, rocking her in time to her words, “Oh, it’s just the
mean old Po-Pos.”

Stephanie
looked up at her aunt, a slightly vindictive glint in her eyes,
“You got another speeding ticket?”

Hannah pushed
Stephanie away playfully, “Gah, creep, get away from me. I knew I
didn’t like you.” Stephanie’s little hands flung about Hannah’s
back again, “You lurve me aunt Hannah. You buy me presents, and you
take me to the library, and you buy me ice cream, and you take me
to movies …”

“Creep, creep,
creep, creep, creep.” Hannah rocked side to side in a mock attempt
at shaking off her niece. Looking up, Hannah noticed that David was
pinching the bridge of his nose with his right hand, his left arm
folded across his chest. She wasn’t fantastic with body language,
but right now, she was pretty sure that David was about to break
down. She turned Stephanie about, and launched her towards the
stormy seas, “Go hug your daddy, creep. He looks like he needs
it.”

David laughed
feebly, but then the tears did come. Stephanie stood between the
two adults, glancing back and forth between them, tears starting to
well in her eyes, that heady mixture of confusion and empathy
building quickly. Hannah stooped close to her, kneeling down, “You
know what creep? Daddy will be fine. Go watch some T.V while we
talk about miserable grown up stuff, okay?”